Matter Labs has withdrawn “ZK” trademark applications due to community criticism

What's new? Matter Labs, the developer of zkSync (Ethereum blockchain scaling solution), has withdrawn all applications for “ZK” trademark registration due to community reaction. In the crypto community, the acronym ZK refers to the zero-disclosure proof-of-concept technology that many startups other than Matter Labs use in developing their solutions.

Source: X.com

ZK is a cryptographic technology that allows one party to a transaction to verify information from another party without revealing that information. It is gaining wider adoption amid growing demand for privacy and security in digital transactions and is already being actively used in lending and trading decentralized financial protocols (DeFi), as well as for personal identification without disclosing personal data.

What else is known? At the end of last month, Matter Labs filed trademark applications for “ZK” in nine countries, while stating that the term “zero knowledge” is solely its intellectual property. This drew criticism from others in the industry.

StarkWare CEO Eli Ben-Sasson called Matter Labs' actions an “absurd IP grab,” noting that ZK's technology was developed for the good of all. “It’s as absurd as an individual baker trying to impose a blanket patent on bread,” the entrepreneur emphasized.

Moreover, Ben-Sasson, together with a number of other developers, signed an open letter condemning the company's actions. Among its signatories are also Turing Award winner and one of the inventors of ZK Shafi Goldwasser, Polygon co-founders Sandeep Nailwal and Brendan Farmer, Polyhedra Network co-founder and zkBridge inventor Tiancheng Xie.

The letter states that ZK's technology is a public good and the company's attempts to seize it through the legal system violate the principles of cryptography. In response, Matter Labs founder and CEO Alex Gluchowski explained that the registration was to protect against scammers passing off their products as Matter Labs products.

The company did later withdraw its applications, thanking the community for its “support and feedback.”

At the end of May, Bybit, the third largest offshore crypto exchange, announced the listing of zkSync (ZK) and a change of ticker symbol for Polyhedra Network (also ZK). The Polyhedra team criticized the decision. That said, prior to listing on OKX, Polyhedra was called ZKbridge and had the ticker symbol ZKB. Polyhedra eventually decided to change the ticker symbol to ZKJ.